Menu

Sunrise of Liberty!

Britain has made a moral decision to put liberty, democracy and society above self-interested concerns of individuals. It’s pretty much a victory for everyone on the planet, British or otherwise.

The nation whose governments once chose – stoically and at every cost – to fight the tyrannies of the last Century has retained a population prepared to carry the torch of justice for the Continent and the World.

A bright future – even for him.

Those who chose to remain will also be among the champions of our new, free, society as allies flock to our side and the knell of independence signals to the countries of Southern Europe that they, too, shall be released from the Carthaginian peace of Brussels-Frankfurt and their prison of Euro debt.

Ora Blu. I’m sitting at a tiny Café table in a cobbled crack-alley between the thick walls of two fortified Mediaeval palazzos in central Florence. From what I can hear on Radio Rai Uno inside, the game is up for Euro-federalists. Britain is bolting from the paddock. The news presenter’s voice chatters over the hiss and squeal of the coffee machine as tiny Starlings peck at the crumbs on the table – now tentatively moving towards my elbow, now darting back as the waitress steps out with my espresso and sets it down with a click.

She holds a Master’s degree in Political Science, but – as an Italian – is lucky even to be employed her uncle’s cafe. She is saving her Euro-pennies to study in London this summer – but it’s expensive. I contemplate the dark bitterness within the bone China thimble before me.

“Va bene?” She asks. I look at her, standing in the twilight in her apron.

“Imagine you are sitting at the deathbed of a terminally ill relative who used to touch your leg at family gatherings,” I start. “He is brain-dead and cannot breathe without mechanical assistance. There has been no chance of recovery for ages and you are paying by the minute to keep the life support machine working. Your lover is outside, trying to text you, but your phone is out of power. The only plug-socket in the room is being used by the life support machine… What do you do?”

She puts a hand on her hip and eyes me askance (this is not the first time we have talked politics and we don’t always agree).

“I would wait for an expert to tell me what I should do.”

This is essentially the dilemma that every nation in the EU now faces vis a vis their common political and fiscal arrangement (what remains of it): choose between switching off the life support machine today or waiting for a humane judge to tell you to switch it off tomorrow.

Today, Britain has collectively decided not to underwrite the misery any more. The oldest free nation, the often saviour of the continent; the expert, has spoken. Next, the Commission and European Central Bank will have to start letting people go. They no longer have the blessing of any civilised neighbour to maintain this failed programme which has brought such misery to Southern and Eastern Europe.

The radio chatters away in the cafe. A pundit from the European Commission is offering his opinions on the Brexit – his Italian warped by a thick Hanseatic accent as he falters and hesitates in his spiel (our former overlords are not used to having to explain themselves).

There is a short silence. The Tiny Starlings dart up to the ancient eaves above us as an early commuter sputters past in Ferragamo linen, Ugolini suede, and a hair-cut that likely cost more than his filthy Vespa.

The Brexit referendum is not just about saving our own 800-year old liberties (which were seriously on the line between 1973 and June 24th 2016), but also empowering the vulnerable countries, emboldening the meek, and setting an example for our neighbours. The EU does not lead – it follows and is blown by the prevailing wind. It is not immoral – because it has no particular agenda other than to exist – but it is amoral. Until now, nobody has ever told them they were not wanted. Not that they have to listen, of course (it’s leadership are safely beyond any form of popular control), but even a dictatorship depends on civil compliance in the end.

Yesterday, Jean-Claude Juncker was promising that Britain would not have any negotiating power with the EU if we left (par for the course over the last forty years, then). Their fury with us – the country which twice saved the continent from supranationalism last century – is so great preciselybecause we have seen the futility of their last stand against the free people of the World and will now show others the same. The reality is that it is not Britain which is threatened by the snivelling, bullying, threats of the European Union – it is the European Union that is threatened by the snivelling, bullying, threats of the European Union. They ran out of bargaining power years ago and, today, they’ve been forced to reveal their hand. Their threats are as shallow as a car-park puddle and that’s why Jean-Claude Juncker needs us out as fast as possible. Thank you very much! But we must not react in kind to our national neighbours. Some countries have dug themselves in deep and will lose much when the Euro collapses. We should show willing to be the crutch of the Germans in particular as they seek to broaden their trade horizons.

“I never thought of it like that,” says the Italian waitress.

Now Greece and Hungary and Italy and all the rest can can see through the Commission’s pathetic last stand against the free people of the world and the voices that the Commission has ignored in Denmark (1992), Ireland (2008), France (2005), The Netherlands (2005) and Greece (2015), will rise like the trumpets at Jericho. The collapse has begun, it is happening fast, and Britain is leading the charge. And – as you’ll recall from the last thousand years of European history – Britain wins.

“Can you pay your bill, please?” Asks the Italian waitress.

We must not not be threatened, we must not be bullied. This must not become Britain’s Prague Spring. Now is the time for the free people of Europe to take inspiration from this small, secular miracle and cut slice the serpent which has held them in its coils. And Britain stands right behind them, on the right side of a thousand years of history, as a friend and ally of the free people of Europe.

By now, a slit of sunlight has cut into the alley and lies across the cobbles like a golden knife.

“The bill,” repeats the waitress. Ah yes, of course. Although I realise it only upon leaving the café – the café needs me more than I need the café – so I rummage in my pocket.

Brexit must not gloat and must endure through every circumstance. Brexit must not be mean. We put our votes where our mouths were and we were extremely lucky to have gotten what we asked for. Our Prime Minister has behaved honourably in resigning. Now we’re all in this together – including the half who voted to remain. These people are not disposable and winning them round is going to be a long haul. Remainers will rightly point to the difficulties which shall befall us and complain of the cost. When in the pub – Brexit should lead by example and buy the first round. And, as I have had to remind myself several times already today – having voted out does not make one God.

Things like the EU and The Iron Curtain come down because a tidal wave of economic and ecological forces – not because clever spies or colourful dissidents like Boris Yeltsin, Milan Kundera or Nigel Farage cause them to. There are people who are right and people who are wrong. The reward for being right is only that you happen to be seen standing on the right side of history. That is the only reward that dissidents can expect – and they might not get it until they’re six feet under.

Over the next few years, the EU will continue to sink into its cesspit of self-induced economic stagnation, consuming billions in citizens’ money per year in exchange for its diseased tongue licking the weeping wounds of the collectivised economies and stagnating big-industry. Even as its mouth sinks below the sewage waterline, some establishment figures will continue to stoop to rasp stale air into its carcass while, drowning in the diversity which was its very purpose, the Commission latches its scurvy gums on to the arse of any wealthy society with the sense to begin its Gollumesque crawl up to the blue skies over the rim of the toilet bowl, far above. Those closest to the obese corpse of the Union – the Civil Services, the polictical classes and bien pensant media elites, will continue to agitate and bully to the end, in order that they might feel the warmth of the last diarrhoearic trickle of benefits which issue from its prolapsed anus as rigor mortis sets in.

But I’m sure that, following Brexit, passive Europhiles here will soon join the clamour for a Quitaly. Mark my words, the first domino has fallen.

It must be in a spirit of friendship, then, that we tell the European nations and their citizens; our co-inheroitors of Christendom: ‘God save the soon-to-be-free nations of Europe.’

As for the EU: get stuffed!

And now I must jump on the train and head North, to where our fellow exiles, the Swiss, howl in their ash-pit of poverty, financial instability, banking crises and isolation from that entity that back-seat cosmopolitans love to refer to: ‘the big wide World.’

God bless you all, and God bless the soon-to-be free nations of Europe.